e University’s Role in India Today: eir Role in Nation Building

Universities contribute immensely to the building of the nation. Mohammad Ahzam notes that, with twenty-eight percent of the country being youth, it is at the college level where the nation gathers momentum of its potential.45 Historically, universities have played a signifcant role in nation-building with the production of skilled labor essential for the development of the country and raising up a group of responsible citizens who care for the wellbeing of their nation. Universities like Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Milia University are a few notable names among the many that stand out for their role in activist work, especially standing up against injustice and oppression. Kamalesh Sharma, the ex-secretarygeneral for the Commonwealth of Nations, puts it clearly when he states, “An overarching truth is that universities have been at the core of the development of nations.”46 Sharma’s statement is not an exaggeration, and it is refected through the role students played in the recent farmer’s protest in India against the three draconian laws passed by the current government.

The Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper of the country reports that thousands of students from various universities like Delhi University (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Punjab University, Jamia Milia Islamia, and Ambedkar University, joined the revolutionary protest with the farmers.47 Sukhwinder Singh, a post-graduate student of history who

45 Mohammad Ahzam, “What Role do Universities Have in Nation Building?” in The Education Daily, June 11, 2021. https://theeducationdaily.com/2021/06/ universities-have-nation-building.

46http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/1119/2010_Ali_Role_Universities_ Transcript.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

47https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/students-join-farmers-in-protest-atdelhi-s-borders/story-UCYW9CRn1uf16XgTaNCU3N.html

184 | Jijo Rajan protested along with the farmers, says that he was not there with the farmers protesting because he had family members associated with farming but because he wanted to stand against injustice.48 Thousands of students from numerous universities of the country stood along with the farmers for weeks and months protesting against unjust laws and were successful in forcing the government to repeal the laws. This is just one recent instance of how students can play a major role in the shaping and building of the country. Therefore, Christian students and the ministries involved in university missions need to formulate a public theology that enables students to interact with their contexts Christianly so that they can participate in the mission of God.

The infuence the student population has on the nation is tremendous, and historically Christian missions to the universities have fallen short. Hence a public theology for the university context is essential for ministries focusing on students but moreso for Christian students on the campus. As Coleman says, Christian missions have struggled to mediate Christian faith in the university context.49 He continues to suggest that “the gravest secularization of Western education has been the covert assumptions concerning the two basic factors truth and man have been non-religious. And they have been false.”50 It is under the same false assumption that Christian students have fallen, not recognizing that all truth is God’s truth, and that God is present and active in their academic disciplines from the time of creation. Unfortunately, even after decades have passed and

48https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/students-join-farmers-in-protest-atdelhi-s-borders/story-UCYW9CRn1uf16XgTaNCU3N.html despite the tremendous growth of Christianity and theological teaching in the country, the problem remains. Hence a robust public theology in the context of Christian academia in the universities is necessary. As Charles Malik asserts, Christian students must be encouraged to apply the “God-question,” asking, examining, and contributing to what God is doing in the world.51 This “God-question” is to a large extent missing in the life of Christian students in the universities of India.

49 A.J. Coleman, 38.

50 Ibid.

Christian faith has something vital to contribute across every discipline, whether it is politics, economics, science, ethics, education, or arts. Christian students, as the disciples of Jesus, need to authentically engage in all aspects of campus life, academics, and conversations so that the Gospel transforms every part of the university and eventually the whole creation. Christian students in universities need to pray and work toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the universities where they have been placed, through which they contribute to the building of the nation. Christian students need to realize that they can have a comprehensive view of the world only in relation to the Triune God revealed fully in the person of Jesus Christ.52 As Paul writes,

He is the image of the invisible God, the frst-born of all creation; for in him, all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities- all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the frst-born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

51 Pillay, 11.

52 Ramachandra, Why Study, 14.

186 | Jijo Rajan

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:15-20)

The Kingship of Christ is applied to personal, spiritual spaces by many Christians. This in itself is not a problem, but the problem is massive when we do not fully comprehend the scope of Jesus’ lordship. Jesus is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all things.53 Malik points out that, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3) is not a statement about individual loyalty, but it is “a set of claims- about who Jesus is.”54 Likewise, Gregg Okesson refers to C. S. Lewis who says, “Christianity is not merely what a man does with his solitude. It is not even what God does with His solitude. It tells of God descending into the coarse publicity of history and there enacting what can-and must-be talked about.”55 Okesson rightly states that God’s truth is “for all people, in all places, and for all aspects of public life.”56 Jesus is Lord of all spaces which includes academic disciplines, the university, the nation. Ramachandra also emphasizes that Jesus is not a mere sage but the “One who holds all created reality together.”57 Christ the Lord thereby has all authority and dominion of truth, knowledge, and wisdom, in this world and out of this world; everything there is under His lordship. Christian students under this lordship of Christ need to usher in the Kingdom of God into the universities God has placed them in. David Bosch says, that the ultimate aim of mission is bound with God’s cosmic-historical plan for redeeming the world.58 Or in other words, God’s plan is to reconcile to His kingdom every inch of His creation, and the academic world is not outside God’s redemption plan.

53 Charles Malik, The Two Tasks (Illinois: EMIS, 2000), 14.

54 Ibid., 15.

55 Gregg Okesson, A Public Missiology- How Local Churches Witness to a Complex World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 67.

56 Ibid, 67–68.

57 Ramachandra, Why Study, 13.

58 David Bosch, Transforming Mission, (New York: Orbis Books, 2011), 180–181.

The Kingdom of God is the main motif of Jesus’ life and ministry. This is evident throughout the New Testament. Bosch states that we cannot apply Jesus’ understanding and practice of the Kingdom directly as it is in today’s context, but we can deduce principles to our own world in an “imaginative and creative way amid changed historical conditions.”59 However, “God’s reign and His kingdom need to be interpreted as the expression of God’s caring authority over the whole of life.”60 Al Tizon encapsulates the scope of the kingdom of God. He writes, “The reign of God has a boundless and all-encompassing efect on the whole of existence, from the domain of the human heart to the cosmos and everything in between.”61 Jesus, in the preaching of His kingdom did not leave out any aspect of the kingdom but preached and lived a holistic life. Tizon continues that this kingdom “brings glad tidings for the whole of the created order and nothing less than the shalom of God.62

Hence, the question Christian students need to ask is what does this shalom look like in their academic context?

How do they usher in the Kingdom of God into the university? These students who are the agents of this reign of God and His kingdom must acknowledge the sovereignty of God in their academic felds and strive to excel, contribute, and redeem their academic disciplines. Gavin D’ Costa encourages students to pursue knowledge primarily out of the love for the world as an object of God’s creation, and only secondarily for instrumental or functional needs. Only through the primary can the

59 Ibid., 35.

60 Ibid.

61 Al Tizon, whole and Reconciled (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 78.

62 Ibid., 80.

188 | Jijo Rajan secondary be best determined. In this sense, the primary end of all forms of knowledge is contemplation of and glory to God, and love of God.63 A proper theological grounding of the scope of God’s redemption plan, His Lordship, and Kingdom is the primary basis on which a public theology for the university needs to be built upon. Christian university students then will begin to delve into the Lordship of Christ in their academics; recognizing the fact that the academic realm is also a realm of God’s creation that He cares for and comes under the purview of His redemption plan. Christian scholars need to realize that they are called as academicians to be the redeeming infuence in their feld of academics in the universities God has placed them in.

Christian students need to efectively “engage in the university” to redeem their academics and their universities for nation-building. While this is a noble concept and a task, the pertinent question is how does it materialize in the “real world”? What are the ways that Christian students can engage in their universities? The following section will elucidate two practical ways that can help this idea take shape.

Students, as disciples of Jesus, need to authentically engage in all aspects of campus life, especially the conversations. They need to converse with the changing cultures and philosophy of the university, joining the constant dialogues that characterize a modern university. Mike Higton quotes Nicholas Wolterstorf who suggests that the postmodern situation is that Christians need to enter the conversation of science (by which he means academic scholarship in general) as Christians.64 He further states,

63 Gavin D’ Costa, Theology in The Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell publishing, 2005), 188.

“For we have learned that the practice of science is not some purely and generically human enterprise, nor some autonomous self-governing and self-sustaining enterprise, but an eminently concrete social-historical enterprise incorporating goals and standard and intuitions and values that people bring to it and that emerge from their interaction with each other after their induction into the practice…We do not shed all our ordinary convictions and commitments at the door of the conversation room of science and enter as nakedly human…We enter as who we are, and we begin conversing on whatever is the topic in hand.65

Christian students need to enter into these conversations as Christians. These conversations allow the students to test and refne their faith too. Ramachandra asserts that conversations in the university have a two-way efect; while the students play their role in the redemption of the academic discipline, the process matures their faith as well.

Conversation in a secular context is intimidating for a Christian student as it confronts their faith while difcult questions are asked. It becomes even more challenging in a context like India, where there is much hostility against Christians. Paul’s experience in Athens is perhaps a perfect model of how we should engage in conversation with people who are not believers of Christ. Acts 17:16–34 gives us the account of how Paul engaged in a deep conversation with

64 Mike Higton, A Theology of Higher Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 114–115.

65 Ibid.

190 | Jijo Rajan the philosophers of Athens and how he was able to use their philosophical literature to convey his message.66

Joshua W. Jipp suggests that there are numerous interpretations of Paul’s Areopagus discourse that range from seeing it as a “placid pantheistic sermon on natural theology all the way to seeing it as a scathing demonization of Gentile religion”; both he says have strong arguments to support their claim.67 While there might be various interpretations of the narrative, there is a general agreement regarding Paul’s efcient use of Athenian literature to convey his message. Paul, like a Greek philosopher, goes to the marketplace and publicly debates the scholars of Athens. “Luke’s narrative exposes a fundamental clash of worldviews between Paul and his audience,” and Paul is able to manage through that to convey the gospel.68 This demonstrates that Paul was willing to take risks and enter into difcult conversations.

Luke identifes two Athenian philosophical schools, the Stoics and the Epicureans. Dean E. Flemming says that the identifcation of both these schools is critical because Paul interacts with them in his conversation.69 His conversation is radical because “he co-opts—one might say takes over and transforms the cultural script—the best aspects of Hellenistic philosophy and claims that they can be found only in the Christian movement.”70 He is able to present his arguments which make a point of contact with Hellenistic philosophers and uses their literature which they acknowledged as valid. Paul recognizes the common ground with the writings of the Greek poets and uses them to connect with his conversation partners.71 However, Jipp rightly points out that Paul’s speech was not just a discourse of mutually shared ideas of God, though he does include that in his speech; but Paul, like Socrates, could stand before the most revered tribunal in the ancient world and demonstrate that the movement he spoke about was “apologetically legitimate and philosophically superior.”72 It is interesting that Eckhard J. Schnabel calls Athens an “old university town.”73 Paul, through this encounter ,perhaps lays down a model of how Christians can engage with the academicians. in life and sometimes have an altar to an “unknown god.” Like Paul, Christian students need to enter conversations. The conversation could be on various ethical issues, music, sports, movies, people, values, etc. Through these conversations, students bring in biblical values and refreshing perspectives that motivate others to think and be inspired. While doing so, students also refect Jesus and in other words share the gospel story. Missions involved in the universities have a signifcant role to play here by providing sound theological training and the tools for the students that enables them to engage with their context with sound theological foundation.

67 Ramachandra, Why Study, 14.

67 Joshua W. Jipp, “Paul’s Areopagus Speech of Acts 17:16–34 as Both Critique and Propaganda,” in Journal of Biblical Literature, 131, No. 3 (2012): 567.https://doi. org/10.2307/23488255.

68 Dean E. Flemming, “Contextualizing the Gospel in Athens: Paul’s Areopagus Address as a Paradigm for Missionary Communication,” Missiology 30, no. 2 (April 2002):200.

69 Ibid.

70 Jipp, 568.

Paul could stand up to the renowned scholars of his world, debate, and converse with them. Charles Malik decries that because of the failure of Christians to celebrate the mind, especially Evangelicals, we have not been able to stand up to the great secular, “naturalistic, atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research.”74 The call for conversations demands excellence in scholarship. Christian students need to master their feld of study with an awareness that excellence in their area helps them to act as competent servants for the Kingdom of God.

71 Flemming, 202.

72 Jipp, 574.

73 Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Contextualizing Paul in Athens: The Proclamation of the Gospel before Pagan Audiences in the Graeco-Roman World,” Religion & Theology 12, no. 2 (2005):172.

74 Simon, 173.

Another practical way the students can engage in the university is through study forums.

Study forums are meetings where students can meet to discuss the connections of their faith and their feld of academics. This does not necessarily mean that they have to forcefully impose a Christian worldview upon their feld or construct a religious version of their subject. Instead, it involves learning to discover what the discipline would look like in the Kingdom of God under the reign of Christ.

The organization we were involved with had study forums as part of the ministry engagement. Students presented papers on numerous aspects of their respective felds of study. The students were encouraged to start with issues and ideas within one’s discipline and locate a pressing problem to which the claims of Christianity would contribute insights. They then asked the question, how could the Christian faith contribute and transform that area of the discipline? For example, a student of agricultural economics, while looking at the issue of agricultural economic policies and their impacts on the poor, is encouraged to assess their research to see whom does it beneft more? How did their faith engage in this assessment? This practice worked as a great launchpad for students to develop a Christian lens for their academic disciples. This was their frst small step toward the redemption of their academic disciples and their university.

While they are in the universities Christian students play an active role in the missio dei. The onus lies on the missions involved in the respective campuses to initiate such discussions and provide the right training that would stimulate and encourage such forums. Once they catch this vision and go out of the university as agriculturists, bankers, civil servants, economists, scientists, physicists, engineers, doctors, educationalists, and so on, they excel in their felds and are a public witness in all those realms outside their campuses too.

“Being frm in faith and making the Reign of God concrete in their life, this Christian community holds on to the Gospel values in shaping a humane society and building the nation.”75 They continue to engage in their felds as Christians and usher in the kingdom values in their vocations, thereby playing their part in the building of the Kingdom of God and the redemption of the whole creation in India.

I would like to borrow the example Vinoth Ramachandra uses in his discussion on the topic Engaging the University in Dubai in 2009. He says, “The novelist Madeleine L’Engle once told a student who wished to become a ‘Christian writer’ that ‘if she is truly and deeply a Christian, what she writes is going

75 Anthoniraj Thumma and Alphonse D. Sahayam Eds., Christian Commitment to Nation Building (Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications,2003), 243.

194 | Jijo Rajan to be Christian, whether she mentions Jesus or not. And if she is not, in the most profound sense, Christian, then what she writes is not going to be Christian, no matter how many times she invokes the name of the Lord.’ To be ‘in the most profound sense, Christian’ is surely the challenge we need to be presenting before our students.”76 To be profoundly Christian in the university context is the need of the hour. Only if students learn to be profoundly Christian will they be able to participate in the redemption of their academic disciplines, their universities, their nation, and ultimately the whole creation.

76 “Engaging the University Today,” Vinoth Ramachandra, Discussion paper for SLT in Dubai, May 15–20, 2009.

Alam, Muzafar. “Higher Education in Medieval India.” In Higher Education in India: Retrospect and Prospect. New Delhi: Association of Indian Universities, 1991.

Ahzam, Mohammad. “What Role do Universities Have in Nation Building?” In The Education Daily, June 11, 2021. https://theeducationdaily.com/2021/06/universities-havenation-building.

Basu, Aparna. “Higher Education in Colonial India.” In Higher Education in India: Retrospect and Prospect. Edited by M. Raza. New Delhi: Association of Indian Universities, 1991.

Bosch, David. Transforming Mission. New York: Orbis Books, 2011.

Chan, Roy Y. “Understanding the Purpose of Higher Education: An Analysis of the Economic and Social Benefts for Completing a College Degree.” JEPPA, 6, No. 5 (2016): 1–41.

Costa, Gavin D. Theology in The Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Coleman, A.J. The Task of the Christian in the University. New York: Association Press, 1947.

Flemming, Dean E. “Contextualizing the Gospel in Athens: Paul’s Areopagus Address as a Paradigm for Missionary Communication.” Missiology 30, no. 2 (April 2002): 199–214.

196 | Jijo Rajan https://www.ymca.int/member/ymca-in-asia-and-pacifc/ ymca-india/

Ghosh, Suresh Chandra. The History of Higher Education in Ancient India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2001.

Ghosh, Suresh Chandra. The History of Education in Medieval India: 1192 A.D. – 1757 A.D. Delhi: Originals, 2001.

Heredia, Rudolf C. “Interrogating Christian EducationExcellence and Relevance in Independent India.” In Songs of Silence: Christians in Nation Building. Edited by S. Arokiasamy and J. Chathanatt. Delhi: Media House, 2000.

Higton, Mike. A Theology of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Jipp, Joshua W. “Paul’s Areopagus Speech of Acts 17:16— 34 as Both Critique and Propaganda.” In Journal of Biblical Literature 131, No. 3 (2012): 567–88. https://doi. org/10.2307/23488255.

Kaur, Navpreet and Navneet Kaur. “Privatization and Commercialization of Higher Education.” In International Journal of Academic Research and Development, 3, No.1 (2018): 456–458.

Malik, Charles. The Two Tasks. Illinois: EMIS, 2000.

Moses, John. “On the University” In Theology the University and the Modern World. Eedited by Pail A. B. Clarke and Andrew Linzey. London: Lester Crook Academic Publishing, 1988.

Okesson, Gregg. A Public Missiology: How Local Churches Witness to a Complex World. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020.

Pillay, Jerry. “Historical Theology at Public Universities Matter.” In HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies. 73, No. 1, (September 2017):1–12.

Ramachandra, Vinoth. “God’s Call and the University.” In Why Study? Exploring the Face of God in the Academy. Singapore: Fellowship of Evangelical Students, 2017.

Schnabel, Eckhard J. “Contextualizing Paul in Athens: The Proclamation of the Gospel before Pagan Audiences in the Graeco-Roman World.” Religion & Theology 12, no. 2 (2005): 172–90.

Simon, Sathish Joseph. “Spiritual Formation as Discipling the Mind.” In Public Theology: Exploring Expressions of the Christian Faith. Edited by Bonnie Miriam Jacob. New Delhi: Primalogue, 2020.

Thumma, Anthoniraj, and Alphonse D. Sahayam, editors. Christian Commitment to Nation Building. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2003.

Tizon, Al. Whole and Reconciled. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

198 | Jijo Rajan https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopediasalmanacs-transcripts-and-maps/christian-impact-indiahistory https://medium.com/@Kuvalayamala/christian-missionarieshijacked-and-denationalised-indias-education-system https://medium.com/@Kuvalayamala/christian-missionarieshijacked-and-denationalised-indias-education-system https://www.statista.com/statistics/918403/number-ofuniversities-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.business-standard.com/article/education/india-sgross-enrolment-in-higher-education-rose-marginallyin-2019-20-121061001249_1.html https://thewire.in/education/census-literacy-religion https://timesofndia.indiatimes.com/india/jains-havehighest-percentage-of-literates-census-data/ articleshow/53942863.cms https://meetjesusatuni.com/2013/09/04/vinoth-ramachandrainterview-part-2 https://www.ymca.ca/Who-We-Are/YMCAHistory#:~:text=1844%20%E2%80%93%20The%20 https://www.campuscrusade.in/history/ https://www.campuscrusade.in/history/ https://www.campuscrusade.in/student-led-movement/ https://communicationscmi.wordpress.com/page/2/ http://scmindia.org/aims.html https://uesi.in/about/ https://meetjesusatuni.com/2013/09/04/vinoth-ramachandrainterview-part-2 http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/1119/2010_Ali_Role_ Universities_Transcript.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/students-joinfarmers-in-protest-at-delhi-s-borders/storyUCYW9CRn1uf16XgTaNCU3N.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/students-joinfarmers-in-protest-at-delhi-s-borders/storyUCYW9CRn1uf16XgTaNCU3N.html

YMCA%20is%20founded,on%20by%20the%20 Industrial%20Revolution.

Priya Santhakumar Leela

Introduction

“Beta, apne ghar aayi hai tu” (Daughter, you have reached your home). Those words would mean the world to a seventeenyear-old girl from a remote Indian village who was dragged into a flthy brothel in a metropolis. They put Sonia in a bubble of hope. However, in a moment, this bubble popped into fear and vulnerability as she realized that the one who called her daughter and reassured her of being home is the pimp who designed her traumatizing journey into the world of global sex trafcking that ended in a high-rise in the city Los Angeles. This is a scene from the Hindi movie Love Sonia, directed by Tabrez Noorani. While this movie depicts the real-life journey of a girl from her poverty-stricken father’s garden to a city for the sex trade, this is also the story of millions of Indian women pushed into the global market of sex trafcking. This paper is an attempt to theologize in this context the thick enmeshment between sex trafcking of Indian women and the global market. Although there are multiple ways of approaching this convergence, this study will analyze this from an economic perspective. Before engaging in this conversation, this paper briefy examines the phrase sex trafcking, the issue of sex trafcking of women in

202 | Priya Leela

India, its causative factors, and its interconnectedness with the global market. The analysis of this interconnectedness will be done through a consumer-centered approach, since most of the existing scholarship on this issue takes a victim-centered approach. Consequently, this paper will investigate the three characteristics of these consumers. Theologizing in this context will be done to address these characteristics in the global sex trafcking of Indian women. Throughout the paper economic terms like demand, product, consumption will be employed while describing the economic phenomenon of global sex trafcking.

Before venturing into the issue of sex trafcking in India it is crucial to perceive what sex trafcking is. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime defnes sex trafcking as follows:

Trafcking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, utilizing the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefts to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation.1 trafcking. Kempadoo argues that sex trafcking is “not the enslavement of women, but a trade and exploitation of labor under conditions of coercion and force.”2 While Kempadoo sees sex trafcking as a problem of the market, Mary Crawford rightly afrms that this problem of the market is driven by the local contexts. Crawford maintains that trafcking in girls and women is a result of the social composition of gender and other aspects of power and status within a certain culture and at a particular historical moment.3 Therefore the issue of sex trafcking in India must be understood contextually.

1 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafcking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, art. 3, Dec. 25, 2003, 2237 U.N.T.S. 319, available at http://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/UNTS/Volume%202237/v2237.pdf. Accessed on 11/20/21.

The intensity of sex trafcking in India was brought to the daylight through an intervention by the Supreme court of India in 2019, which ordered the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to scrutinize the data on missing persons, specifcally children and women in the country. As per the SC orders, the NCRB prepared a comprehensive report centered on crime data for three years (2016–2018) titled “Report on Missing Women and Children in India.”4 According to the NCRB report on missing persons on crime in India, the sum of persons missing in “2016, 2017, and 2018 were 290,439, 305,267, and 347,524, respectively.”5 A major percentage of those reported missing were women and children. However, the actual number of missing women would be much higher than the reported cases as many cases

2 Kempadoo, Trafcking and prostitution reconsidered: new perspectives on migration, sex work, and human rights (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), viii.

3 Mary Crawford, Sex Trafcking in South Asia: Telling Maya’s Story (London: Routledge, 2010), 15

4 Usha Rana, “Understanding the Hidden Aspects of Sex Trafcking of Girl Children in Central India,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, no 9 (2021), 256

5 Rodrigues, Savio. 2020. “What happened to the 5,86,024 women missing in India?” Goa Chronicles (India), 17th September 2020. https://goachronicle.com/ what-happened-to-the-586024-women-missing-in-india/

204 | Priya Leela escape records. A report by Goa Chronicles in September 2020 suggests that trafcking is the primary cause of a high number of missing women and children.6 This is confrmed through the fact that due to this huge number of recorded cases of trafcking, particularly sex trafcking, India maintains her Tier 2 status in the list of Human Trafcking in Persons Report 2019. 7 Since the issue of sex trafcking of women in India is a giant, it is important to enquire into the causes of this. Scholars have categorized two important factors that are causative of the issue of sex trafcking in India.

Two major factors that require attention are the push and pull factors that drive the industry. Push factors are those force woman into being vulnerable to being trafcked and the pull factors are the external factors that create the opportunity and space for sex trafcking. Usha Rana articulates that there are several push factors, including “patriarchy, poverty, illiteracy, and some social malpractices that encourage the whole environment for trafcking in the country.”8 Other scholars in the same feld have also confrmed that these are the major push factors in India. Vimal Vidushy observes that the push factors include poor socio-economic conditions of a large number of families, poverty coupled with frequent, almost annual natural disasters like foods leading to virtual destitution of some people, lack of education, skill, and income opportunities for women (and for their family members) in rural areas, absence of awareness about the activities of trafckers, pressure to collect money for dowries which leads to sending daughters to distant places for work, dysfunctional family life, domestic violence against women, low status of girl children, etc.9

6 Rodrigues, Savio. “What Happened to the 5,86,024 Women Missing in India?” Goa Chronicles, September 17th, 2020. https://goachronicle.com/what-happenedto-the-586024-women-missing-in-india/.

7 US Department of State, Trafcking in Persons Report, 2019 https://www.state. gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-Trafcking-in-Persons-Report.pdf.

8 Rana, 258.

While the push factors are a combination of systemic corruptions and unavoidable natural calamities. The underlying pull factors are often preventable components within a corrupt society. Vidushy describes the pull factors in India as lucrative employment propositions in big cities, easy money, the promise of better pay and a comfortable life by the trafcking touts and agents, the demand of young girls for marriage in other regions, demand low-paid and underage sweatshop labor, growing demand of young kids for adoption, rise in demand for women in the rapidly expanding sex industry.10

Siddharth Kara confrms this as he postulates that “all sex trafcking crimes have two components; slave trading and slavery; slave trading represents the supply side of sex trafcking industry and slavery represents the demand side.”11 Therefore, it is evident that pull factors are factors that exist outside the trafcked women’s lifestyle and each of them is connected to the market. The pull factors facilitate sex trafcking to enter the marketplace. While many studies deal with the push factors that force women into the sex industry, there are very few that explore the pull factors that make this phenomenon an economic issue. The pull factors introduce sex trafcking into the marketplace and the industry thrives in India. Moreover, the industry does not miss out on the new arenas of business that the global market has introduced. Therefore, it is crucial to study this issue through the lens of the market economy.

9 Vimal Vidushy, “Human trafcking In India: An Analysis.” International Journal of Applied Research 2, no 6 (2016): 169.

10 Ibid.

11 Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafcking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (New York: Columbia University Press), 7.

Over the past few decades, citizens from various parts of the world have become more symbiotic and more closely linked in many ways due to globalization. Globalization is best explained by the very spread of the term as Anthony Giddens states, “The global spread of the term is the evidence of the very change it describes.”12 Globalization has numerous components, and one of those is the globalization of the market that facilitates business activities to transcend national borders. Globalization has opened many roads to marketing opportunities. This novel phenomenon painted by globalization has impacted nearly every aspect of human life in India and continues to transform global economic transaction. Central among the goals of globalization is the building up of a global privatized market economy to which local Indian market economies are linked. In such a market system the state plays a lesser role in the economy and when there is a crisis the cost of the economic crisis is borne often by women.13 In any society the most vulnerable bear the brunt of economic crisis. This interconnectedness and symbiosis of trade that the global market has opened have contributed to the international sex trafcking of women. It is estimated that among women and children who are trafcked each year through international borders, 80% end up in forced sex work.14 Another study in

12 Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives (London: Routledge, 2000), 1.

13 Kathryn Farr, Sex Trafcking: The Global Market in Women and Children (New York, Word Publisher, 2005), 140.

14 US Department of States: Trafcking in Persons Report, Country narratives: India, 2007.

2020 by the United Nations calculated that trafcking for sexual exploitation accounts for over ffty percent of all found trafcking cases around the globe.15 Both these studies point to the fact that sex trafcking accounts for a larger percentage of human trafcking. India has demonstrated this through its role in the global sex trafcking of women. Kara’s study confrms that India is a global player in the sex trafcking industry where women from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh are trafcked to the Gulf States, England, Korea, and the Philippines for CSE. As well, the United Nations reported trafcking for CSE from India to Western Asia (the most prevalent), Kenya, The United Arab Emirates, The United States of America, and to a lesser extent to Bahrain, Bhutan, Canada, France, Germany, Kuwait, Malaysia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, The United Kingdom, and The United Republic of Tanzania.16

This is confrmed by the report by the United Nations stating that “a few alarming trends that have emerged in recent years are sexual exploitation through sex tourism, child sex tourism, pedophilia, prostitution in pilgrim towns and other tourist destinations, and cross-border trafcking.”17 While discussing the features of India’s sex industry in the global

15 “Global Report on Trafcking in Persons.” A Report by United Nations Ofce on Drugs and Crime, 2020. 10, https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-andanalysis/tip/2021/GLOTiP_2020_15jan_web.pdf

16 Edward Mills, Michel Jofres et. al, “Sexual Slavery without Borders: Trafcking for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in India” International Journal for Equity in Health 7, no 2 (September 2008), 5.

17 To Prevent and Combat Trafcking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Women, India Country Report in the World Congress III Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2008) https://www.unodc.org/pdf/india/publications/India%20 Country%20Report.pdf.

208 | Priya Leela market, Kara states that sex slaves are moved from “a rural area into an urban center and then selected to be transported internationally.” The reason for such steps according to him is to break the slave completely before being transported internationally so that she would be accepting of the life that she would get in the international space.18 These are stages in their move from the soiled brothels of India to the sprawling mansions in the economically richer parts of the world. These studies confrm that while the global market facilitates sex trafcking, India has become the source, transit, and destination of global sex trafcking. Such a position of India in the global sex market demands an exploration of the economy of this industry.

This section will explore the issue of sex trafcking in India in the global market economy. Such an exploration is called for because this industry has come to dominate a strategic and vital spot in the growth of the international market while gradually taking on the guise of a normal sector of the economy.”19 Such a disguise must be uncovered to expose the moral decay behind its economy. This explanation will take a consumer-centered approach formulating appropriate theological responses and suggesting possible interventions applicable to the Indian context. A consumer-centered study demands attention to three important features infuenced by the power of consumers: pressing demand, the purchasable

18 Kara, 10–11.

19 Richard Poulin, “Globalization and the Sex Trade: Trafcking and the Commodifcation of Women and Children.” Canadian Woman Studies 22, no 3 (2003): 38.

‘product,’ and the persistent abuse in the global market of Indian sex trafcking.

Demand is the lifeblood of any market. No market can exist without adequate demand. While multiple factors contribute to constructing a sense of demand, it is the consumer who creates demand. However, economics, since its establishment as a scientifc feld during the nineteenth century, has dedicated more interest to the supply side of the economic problem than to the demand side. Nevertheless, that an economy cannot exist without demand makes it crucial to give “demand” deserved attention. Therefore, in the global market of India’s sex slaves, like any other market, it is the consumer who is primarily responsible for the sustenance of the market. Trafckers and pimps engage in trafcking to make money. While discussing how demand acts as the driving force of the sex industry, Donna Hughes states that demand is the guiding force behind trafcking because the trafcking procedure begins when consumers and pimps in countries like India create the demand for women and girls to be used.20 Therefore, demand not only creates the market for global sex trafcking for Indian women but also is the starting point of the trafcking process. Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter explain that without the demand for the sexual benefts of the trafcked women from the consumer there would not be sex trafcking at the local, national, or international level.21 An absence or decline in demand would crash this market, but the demand exists, and it is vast. The vastness of this demand is refected in the proft it creates. Kara postulates that this industry has generated billions of dollars of proft in 2007, much higher than the proft generated by any other industry in the world.22 He illustrates this by stating that “the sale of trafcked sex slaves to brothel owners and pimps generated revenues of $1.0 billion in 2007 or a global average sale price of $1,895 per slave. After costs, these sales generated approximately $600 million in profts.”23 Therefore, this industry creates a proft exponentially higher than legitimate companies. Furthermore, Kara adds that these profts have continued to grow, and in 2011 the industry’s suggested annual returns amounted to “$56.7 billion.”24 As shown by the above data, the sex trade is one of the world’s most lucrative businesses, and it continues to thrive. This thriving depends on the consumer’s demand for sexual services, its lifeblood. While the demand is centered in a body that someone can control for their own pleasure and power, it is also deeper in how one thinks of the “other,” revealing issues of power and control. So individual buying decisions and the power of consumer’s agency facilitate the need for a “product” to be purchased.

20 Donna M. Hughes “The Demand: The Driving Force of Sex Trafcking: The Human Rights Challenge of Globalization in Asia-Pacifc-U.S,” Globalization Research Center, University of Hawaii, November 13–15, 2002, 2.

21 Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter, The Slave Next Door: Human Trafcking and Slavery in America Today (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 85.

While demand drives this industry, it creates the space for a “purchasable product.” It is into this space that the vulnerable Indian women subjected to the push factors are dragged. They therefore become the “product” that is sold in this market. The role of the consumer here is driven by their power to purchase. Here, sex trafcking moves from a problem of poverty to a problem of prosperity, from a problem of powerlessness to a problem of power. It is this power to purchase the desired “product” for pleasure that commodifes these women. Karl Marx’s view of commodity clarifes the perspective behind this commodifcation. Marx states,

22 Kara, 16.

23 Ibid., 19.

24 Ibid.

A commodity is, in the frst place, an object outside of us, a thing that by its properties satisfes human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or fancy, makes no diference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfes these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.25

Marx’s expression captures the philosophy of commodifcation that lies behind the Indian sex trafcking industry, where the consumer views women as mere objects that satisfy wants that stem from their fancies. Kathleen Barry rightly describes this by using the term “industrialization of sex,” by stating that, “industrialization of sex” here refer to the production of a product—sex—that involves making or manufacturing that product from and in the human self, constructing it into that which it was not (selves are not originally sexed or prostituted) for market exchange. Sex industrialization is massive commodity production.” The consumer here is unconcerned about the woman who is viewed as a “product” purchasable with her/his status, prosperity, and power. In the global market for trafcking, the purchasing power of the population of consumers pushes these women into a state of mere “commodity” whose “use,” therefore, is the consumers’ prerogative. This leads to constant abuses.

25 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, edited by Frederick L. Bender (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1988), 45.

212

| Priya Leela